Love Meetings

The(ir) Blurb...

Microphone in hand, Pier Paolo Pasolini asks Italians to talk about sex: he asks children where babies come from, young and old women if they are men's equals, men and women if a woman's virginity matters, how they view homosexuals, how sex and honor connect, if divorce should be legal, and if they support closing the brothels (the Merlina Act). He periodically checks in with Alberto Moravia and Cesare Musatti. Bersani is intrusive and judgemental, prodding those who answer. The film's thesis: despite the booming post-war economy, Italians' attitudes toward sex are either rigidly Medieval (the poor and the South) or muddled and self-censoring (the bourgeoisie and the North).

For Love Meetings, Pasolini traveled throughout Italy, from the factories to the beaches, and interviewed passersby about their attitudes toward sex. A charismatic interlocutor, he questions them, mic in hand, on a wide range of topics: the importance of sex in everyday life, prostitution, homosexuality, the legalization of divorce. And while discussing the customs of the country and its changing mores, invariably his subjects begin to broach other topics as well, like the way ideas about sex are informed by nationalism or religion or gender relations. Though a lesser-known entry in Pasolini’s filmography, Love Meetings is endlessly compelling, both as a social artifact and a work of art. “Every man is made differently,” the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti remarks, referring both to their physical constitution and their spiritual disposition. “Therefore all men are, in their own way, abnormal. All men are, in a way, in contrast with nature.”